of his first. Well, if you want to share your old age with a middle-aged adolescent, I don't.'
'Since I'm spending my own middle-age with a bad-tempered and callous '
'I am not callous. I may be bad-tempered but I am not callous. I am merely trying to do the best for your...all right, our son while there's still time.'
'But his reports say '
But Mr Clyde-Browne's patience had run out. 'Reports? Reports? I'd as soon believe a single word of a Government White Paper as give any credence to those damned reports. They're designed to con parents of morons to go on shelling out good money. What I want are decent exam results.'
'In that case you should have taken my advice in the first place and had Peregrine privately tutored,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne, knitting with some ferocity.
Mr Clyde-Browne wilted into a chair. 'You may be right at that,' he conceded, 'though I can't imagine any educated man staying the course. Peregrine would have him in a mental home within a month. Still, it's worth trying. There must be some case-hardened crammer who could programme him with enough information to get his O-levels. I'll look into it.'
As a result of this desperate determination, Peregrine had spent the Easter holidays with Dr Klaus Hardboldt, late of the Army Education Corps. The doctor's credentials were of the highest. He had drilled the Duke of Durham's son into Cambridge against hereditary odds and had had the remarkable record of teaching eighteen Guards officers to speak pidgin Russian without a lisp.
'I think I can guarantee your son will pass his O-levels,' he told Mr Clyde-Browne. 'Give me anyone for three weeks of uninterrupted training and they will learn.'
Mr Clyde-Browne had said he hoped so and had paid handsomely. And Dr Hardboldt had lived up to his promise. Peregrine had spent three weeks at the Doctor's school in Aldershot with astonishing results. The Doctor's methods were based on his intimate observations of dogs and a close connection with several chief examiners.
'Don't imagine I expect you to think, because I don't,' he explained the first morning. 'You are here to obey. I require the use of only one faculty, that of memory. You will learn off by heart the answers to the questions which will be set you in the exam. Those of you who fail to remember the answers will be put on bread and water; those who are word perfect will get fillet steak. Is that clear?'
The class nodded.
'Pick up the piece of paper in front of you and turn it over.'
The class did as they were told.
'That is the answer to the first question in the Maths paper you will be set. You have twenty minutes in which to learn it off by heart.'
At the end of twenty minutes, Peregrine could remember the answer. Throughout the day, the process continued. Even after dinner it resumed and it was midnight before Peregrine got to bed. He was wakened at six next morning and required to repeat the answers he had learnt the day before to a tape recorder.
'That is known as reinforcement,' said the Doctor. 'Today we will learn the answers to the French questions. Reinforcement will be done tomorrow before breakfast.'
Next day, Peregrine went hungrily into the classroom for geography and was rewarded with steak at dinner. By the end of the week, only one boy in the class was still incapable of remembering the answers to all the questions in History, Geography, Maths, Chemistry, Biology and English Literature.
Dr Hardboldt was undismayed. 'Sit, sir,' he ordered when the boy fell off his chair for the third time, owing to semi-starvation. The lad managed to get into a sitting position. 'Good dog,' said the Doctor, producing a packet of Chocdrops. 'Now beg.'
